Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Elevation of Programming
A while back Jollyblogger carried a "confession" from Youth Specialities. the confession concerns the role that YS played in fostering the "attractional" model for youth ministries. (I really hate that word) Meaning, as they put it "if you build it they will come."
Bully for them! Confession is always a good start. But here's a dirty little secret - they didn't have much choice. "Why not?" you ask. Simple - they have to raise money and people donate to things they can see, not intangibles like hanging around with kids. You want to raise money, you have to "build it."
This is one of the reasons I am increasingly unhappy with the "professionalization" of ministry. The more people we pay, the more money we have to raise, and the more programs we have to build, often at the expense of genuine person-to-person minstry.
I believe the church in general is headed towards a crisis point on this and the cycle needs to be broken somehow. Don't get me wrong, we can keep programming and building and keep the money flowing, but at some point, the reason for all that is just going to get lost. Worse yet, we are going to divide the church into "real" Christians that get paid to do ministry and the lightweights that foot the bill.
How do we break the cycle? That's a tough call - at the heart of it lies tax law. Finanacially supporting a person instead of a ministry has enormous and detrimental tax consequences for both the giver and the recepient. I don't see there being any political support for changing that particular part of the tax code anyway.
But as with all good things, we can act better than the law allows. We need to teach and act like we mean what we say - all Christians are ministers. We can organize around that. We need to sacrifice our dreams to our call. We need to rely on God's favor, not man's. We need to measure success in quality, not quantity.
The great commission calls us not to fill pews, build programs, or property. No, it calls us to make disciples. That's what we need to do.
Related Tags: ministry, tax code, professionalism, attractional, metrics
Bully for them! Confession is always a good start. But here's a dirty little secret - they didn't have much choice. "Why not?" you ask. Simple - they have to raise money and people donate to things they can see, not intangibles like hanging around with kids. You want to raise money, you have to "build it."
This is one of the reasons I am increasingly unhappy with the "professionalization" of ministry. The more people we pay, the more money we have to raise, and the more programs we have to build, often at the expense of genuine person-to-person minstry.
I believe the church in general is headed towards a crisis point on this and the cycle needs to be broken somehow. Don't get me wrong, we can keep programming and building and keep the money flowing, but at some point, the reason for all that is just going to get lost. Worse yet, we are going to divide the church into "real" Christians that get paid to do ministry and the lightweights that foot the bill.
How do we break the cycle? That's a tough call - at the heart of it lies tax law. Finanacially supporting a person instead of a ministry has enormous and detrimental tax consequences for both the giver and the recepient. I don't see there being any political support for changing that particular part of the tax code anyway.
But as with all good things, we can act better than the law allows. We need to teach and act like we mean what we say - all Christians are ministers. We can organize around that. We need to sacrifice our dreams to our call. We need to rely on God's favor, not man's. We need to measure success in quality, not quantity.
The great commission calls us not to fill pews, build programs, or property. No, it calls us to make disciples. That's what we need to do.
Related Tags: ministry, tax code, professionalism, attractional, metrics
